Image credit: Original illustration
Operators are abandoning paid-media acquisition in favor of owned channels (first-party data, CRM, affiliate networks) as regulatory restrictions narrow and economics collapse. Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands have each tightened untargeted advertising rules; Illinois and other US states have added marketing taxes. The ROAS math on paid media has flipped.
The baseline economics: before the tax wave, an operator could spend $1.25 on paid media to acquire a $1 LTV player and break even or profit on volume. That $0.25 margin absorbed creative, bidding, and channel margin. Today, a 25-cent-per-wager tax in Illinois and a 30% top rate on GGR make that acquisition math negative. More customers at a lower LTV margin means the best option is the cheapest one: owned channels.
Where the spend actually moved
Belgium's restrictions (ban on untargeted ads, effective Feb 2023, with 2028 shirt-sponsorship phase-out) cut the ROI on general-audience campaigns 40-60%. Operators redirected that budget to owned email, SMS, and loyalty-tier reactivations, where no untargeted restriction applies. Germany's 6-21h media blackout and influencer-partnership ban (GlueStV, in force 2021-present) pushed spend from broadcast and affiliate influencers into owned-audience newsletters and app push. The Netherlands' complete ban on untargeted ads (2022-) is the clearest signal: not a single FanDuel or DraftKings campaign reached a Dutch bettor via paid search or social in the last 18 months.
Italy's Dignity Decree (2023-present) took a different vector: hard bans on free bets and bonuses paid for via paid media, not the ads themselves. The effect was identical: every euro an operator was spending on paid-media customer acquisition at a loss now goes to owned-channel retention and win-back.
Affiliates become full partners, not traffic brokers
The shift reframes affiliate economics. When paid media was the dominant channel, affiliates competed on cost per install and click. Now, as first-party data becomes the scarce asset and the owned channel becomes the retention layer, the best affiliates are the ones that own their own audiences: Better Collective's FanReach (50M+ sports fans across owned media and social), Catena Media's marketplace (where Better Collective bought majority stake), and Gambling.com's owned newsletter list.
Operators are moving from cost-per-acquisition (pay per click) to revenue-share deals with these owned-audience partners: 30-40% of the player's GGR, rather than $0.50 per click. That deal structure inverts the incentive. The affiliate now wins by LTV, not volume, and an affiliate that spends money building an owned audience at a lower ROAS sees a payoff when it monetizes that audience at GGR-share rates.
The inside-out operators pull further ahead
Entain's owned-brand investments (Ladbrokes, Coral, Bwin, Party) and Flutter's own-media spend (The Unspun newsletter, FanDuel TV, sports-data partnerships) look less like brand vanity and more like insurance. An operator that owns a media channel that reaches 10M sports fans monthly can acquire at cost-of-goods (email domain + SMS list, roughly 5-10% of media spend) and never pays the tax or advertising-restriction overhead.
The downside is concentrated risk: an operator tied to one owned-media property (a newsletter, an app, a sponsorship) faces the same dependency risk as a supplier. The upside is owning the data, owning the audience, owning the distribution. This is why the largest operators are all investing in media properties now instead of just buying media.
The long-tail losers and the regulatory arbitrage
Smaller operators and white-labels that cannot afford to build owned channels are moving to: lower-margin affiliate deals (40-50% revenue share, vs. the 30-40% the majors pay); higher cost-per-customer via the affiliate middlemen; or geographic shifts to regions where the regulatory burden is lighter (Africa, Latin America, unregulated US states). Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois all still allow paid-media sports betting ads with no explicit untargeted ban, so a small operator can acquire there at a still-positive ROAS and then move the customer to a licensed site in Europe once the Visa/Mastercard rail clears. The arbitrage is regulatory timing, not media.
The consolidation in play: big operators with owned media win; mid-tier operators consolidate onto a few high-LTV affiliates and accept lower volume; small operators move offshore or geographic-shift.